Transgender service members and their families dealing with fallout from Trump's tweets

For months, Kiera Walker grappled with the decision of how and when to come out as a transgender
woman to her fellow members of the Coast Guard. She had served in the
Guard’s Duluth, Minnesota, station for about two and a half years, but
her colleagues had known her only as Kieran, the male gender marker she
used when she signed up for the Coast Guard Reserve years before.

Walker says she spoke with her superior and had his blessing before
making an announcement to her colleagues during an all-hands meeting in
July. It was “nerve wracking,” she said. Her wife, Brandie Walker, stood
off to the side for support.

After Kiera Walker came out to the group as a trans woman, “There was a
line to come over and shake my hand and tell me how courageous and brave
it was to do that and how they’re supportive,” she told us

Her relief at being accepted was short lived, however. Exactly two weeks later, on July 26, President Donald Trump
sent Walker and her family into a tailspin with three short tweets
announcing a ban on transgender individuals serving in any capacity in
the U.S. military.

“I remember that day very clearly, very vividly,” Brandie Walker told us “I happened to be scrolling on Facebook, and that was the
first thing that popped up on my newsfeed, and I went, ‘This has to be
fake.’”

Military leaders worked quickly to assuage some of their service
members’ concerns without directly contradicting Trump. Gen. Joseph
Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued his own
guidance the next day, saying there would be no immediate changes until
further instructions were handed down from the president. “In the
meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect,”
Dunford said at the time.

The Coast Guard is the only branch of the military that falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security,
as opposed to the Department of Defense. While the Guard largely ends
up following the same policies, Adm. Paul Zukunft, the commandant of the
Coast Guard, also spoke out in support of transgender service members
in the wake of the tweets.

Zukunft said that after the tweets, he reached out to all 13 openly
transgender members of the Coast Guard and referred to a conversation he
had with Lt. Taylor Miller at a Center for Strategic and International
Studies event in Washington on Aug. 1.

“Taylor’s family has disowned her. Her family is the United States Coast
Guard. And I told Taylor, ‘I will not turn my back. We have made an
investment in you, and you have made an investment in the Coast Guard,
and I will not break faith,’” Zukunft said during the event.